<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Million Reasons by Aphelyon</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583510">Million Reasons</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphelyon/pseuds/Aphelyon'>Aphelyon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Romance, Body Image, Declarations Of Love, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Romantic Fluff, Trust, affirmations</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:34:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,217</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphelyon/pseuds/Aphelyon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hugh still grapples with how he relates to his body, but this time - from now and forever - Paul is there with him whispering heartfelt affirmations to ease his pain. </p><p>-------</p><p>Post S2. Paul whispering romantic truths to Hugh.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>USS Spaceboos ficlets and snippets</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Million Reasons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A thing that came very quickly to me that was inspired by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B8itXIzpfne/?igshid=e8ajbmszk438"> this Blue Fox Green Fox post </a> . Thank you to  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/pencilguin/pseuds/pencilguin"> @Pencilguin </a> for the beta.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/> Hugh, you once told me that there are a million different reasons as to why you love me. The same, of course, stands for me about you. The same is also true about how I think there are a million different ways in which I believe you are beautiful. Truthfully, both of these things do not cease at only a million. They are endless and vast, the end of the horizon for these reasons lays at a depth that stretches far beyond the reach of all possible life and the light from every star suspended in infinite skies beyond.</p><p> I love you. </p><p> You are beautiful. </p><p> I loved you then, and I love you now. You were beautiful then, and you are now - these things will always be true. </p><p> Never a moment passes in which these things are not true, even now as you lay underneath me, stripped bare of not only all your clothes but of all the walls which you build for yourself. I am beholden to your vulnerability that you allow me to witness this moment, and all possible moments, once more. Each and every iteration anew of you that I am witness to, I promise you, is beautiful.</p><p> Yet you lay here, underneath me, naked and raw. As I sit on top of you my own naked thighs, pressing against your sides, can feel each tremor in your breath, although your heavy breathing does not attempt to even hide these fractured afflictions. This is beautiful too, I assure you, even if you don’t believe it and it breaks me to know that you don’t. </p><p> The quiet moment when you confessed this to me was shattering. I know you struggle with this, this new <em>everything</em>. I know you do, and that’s okay, I promise. But when you broke down in my arms confessing to me how you still feel disconnected from your image of yourself and cannot reconcile how you feel about yourself or with what I profess to you - that it’s distant and feels untrue, that you do not believe me when I remind you of how I see you through my eyes. To hear you damn the image that you hold of yourself to me was shattering. Each time thereafter, it remains equally so too. </p><p> Yes, even now as you lay under me with your arm over your face, incapable of shielding yourself from the insidious whispers from within. Even now in your pain you are beautiful, although I confess I wish it weren’t so. </p><p> You may not believe me when I tell you that you’re beautiful, but you do trust me and that is something I will hold onto with every fibre of my being for as long as I am in this world. Even in this moment as you are scared and unsure of yourself, perhaps especially so. </p><p> Trust me. Don’t be scared. I love you. You are beautiful. </p><p> I am here, with you, for you. I hope my hands can still make you feel safe as they once did. </p><p> Perhaps they do after all. It is a silent affirmation in the way which your body opens up to me as I run my hands up your torso and guide your arms above your head without any of the signs of resistance that you feel towards yourself, within yourself. The only indication of this is how you still won’t meet my eyes and cast your head to the side as if there is anything you should be ashamed of. There isn’t, I assure you, even though I know you’re frustrated with yourself - with this new body of yours and how every function feels new, untested and like a personal betrayal to who you thought you were. I implore you to envisage the beauty in these new cadences of yours like I do, and I do love them, and in time you will too.</p><p> We have time, and that in itself is a beautiful and impossible thing.</p><p> You are real and whole and so alive underneath my hands. The heat which you radiate from us making love is overwhelming and I submit myself to this more fully as I lean down to you, letting your heat engulf me. Your head may be turned away but in doing so you’ve laid bare your exposed neck to me for safe keeping, so I press my lips to this sacred, fragile place. I wish I can simply kiss away this self doubt you hold in your soul, and needless shame of yours. These demons are not new to you, but perhaps their new schemes drown out the old with fresh new inflictions, while their old lies become distant murmurs. This pain has not extinguished, only changed temperature. </p><p> It’s here that I choose to whisper to you, my bare chest pressed to yours, breathing with you, sticking to you from the beautiful mess you made of yourself, now between us, but this is a quiet aside that I revel in. I know the shame you feel from this all to quick climax, from this body untested and new, you’ve confessed this as well. This is a one-way shame you needlessly harbour. I tell you, in the voice I reserve only for you, that I love you, I whisper professions of your beauty against your skin and oaths that I will hold you in my arms until the day that you believe me.</p><p> You sigh, deeply and with defeat and tell me, <em>‘the universe will surely end before that happens</em>.’ You say this as if that were an impossibility, as if we both weren’t witnesses to the universe being at the brink of annihilation several times before.</p><p> But as you’ve confessed, you have given those insidious whispers from your mind a voice that they do not deserve, nor are they true. Yes, with time, you will know this. </p><p> Truly, I wish you can see what I behold as I lean back, but I’m unwilling to pull back any further than what a breath can travel. I cannot begin to describe how beautiful this is; to feel your breath on my skin or your pulse under the tips of my fingers as I cup your head in my hand. The indescribable beauty of your trust in me as I guide your gaze back to mine is disarming, even in this state which I have wholly given all of myself to you. I trace the manifestations of our love that grace your features as beautiful inflections. From your flushed cheeks and still laboured breath that dances hot over my thumb as I brush it over your swollen lips, but as your eyes find mine again, nothing compares to the beauty of these deeply soulful, dark and tender eyes. I savour it all.</p><p> If it is the end of the universe that I have to wait for in order for you to come to know every endless possibility of ways in which you are beautiful to me - as you always have been, and forever will be - then I will happily accept this fate of ours. </p><p> I avow to you, with a whisper upon your lips, ‘<em>forever it is</em>.’</p><p> A million reasons cannot begin to depict the depth of these truths;</p><p> I love you, Hugh, and you are so beautiful.<br/><br/></p><p><br/><br/>// end</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading! As always I really love your thoughts and feedback, it's tremendously appreciated.</p><p>You can also come find me over at <a href="https://aphelyons.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> or more actively on <a href="https://twitter.com/Aphelyons">twitter</a> - where I post drawings of Culmets stuff I do there too.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>